'JULIAN LEWIS CLAIMS TORIES WOULD HAVE MAJORITY WITHOUT CLEGG'

… The 1922 Committee needs to represent the full spectrum of opinion in the Conservative Party, not just that segment of it most compliant with the daily ‘line to take’. We do the Prime Minister and his team no favours if we fail to communicate with them frankly, openly and honestly.

In 2001 I was briefly a member of the Executive of the 1922 Committee – stepping down on appointment to the Whips Office, then serving as a Shadow Minister until 2010 when the coalition was created. In my view, coalitions in general distort democracy and coalitions with the Liberals empower our opponents.

Had we not entered one, we would now have a Conservative majority – as Nick Clegg admitted in his 1 May 2011 Observer interview: “If we hadn’t gone into coalition with the Conservatives, as night follows day there would have been another election within a few months. You probably would have had an outright Conservative victory.”

A suspicion exists that some of our ‘strategists’ prefer the present arrangement to a return to a majority Conservative government. Occasionally, such people suggest that we should retain the coalition, even if we win a majority in 2015. I utterly reject this view.

U-turns and rebellions are characteristic of parties which make up policy on the hoof and fail to consult their own rank-and-file. When mistakes are being made – on EU referenda, on House of Lords reform, on hoarding petrol or on selling off our forests – the leadership needs to know, and needs to know quickly.

If elected to the Executive, I shall work to ensure that the Committee ‘tells it like it is’ whether or not that is what the leadership wants to hear.